Help your team members navigate successful careers for themselves and a successful future for your business – working together
Career pathways, career ladders, and career lattices are terms used frequently in today’s work world, but what do they really mean, what’s the difference between them, and how can they help you keep your brightest and best team members?
A career pathway outlines a sequence of education, training activities, or work experience needed to secure a job and advance over time to successively higher levels of employment. Essentially, career pathways are a vehicle for moving your employees into entry-level positions while providing access to skilled jobs with higher pay and incentives as workers progress along the pathway.
Career pathways come in all shapes and sizes – there’s no one way to represent a career pathway, but here’s an example that may be helpful.
Think of an entry-level sales representative who gets promoted to account manager, then store manager and beyond – this is considered upward movement along a traditional career pathway.
But what happens along the path between the sales representative position and the account manager position, or between account manager and store manager? You got it – a lot! Here are some examples of the types of education, skills development, or on-the-job training that might typically happen for an employee prior to them moving up the career pathway into a more advanced position.
Moving toward account manager, a sales rep needs to hone their communication skills.
- The sales rep might take a self-assessment at work that shows them account management is indeed a terrific fit for their interests and talents.
- Their employer might offer a Communications and Customer Service course to support their development in this area.
- Their store manager might provide plenty of on-the-job training once they realize the sales rep has a knack for customer-service interactions.
- Additionally, the sales rep continues to develop new skills as they spend time in their current position, and might also take time to learn the next level by job shadowing a current account manager.
This sales representative successfully moved up the pathway because they pursued a variety of actions that served as stepping stones along the way. Not only did they possess their own personal initiative and resolve, but they also received an enormous amount of encouragement, education, and training to support their continued career development. As their abilities grew, so did their productivity and self-confidence. Their employer’s investments in their learning and development pay off not only in the short-term, but also in the long run – for the company’s bottom line.
Growing in every direction
Today, employees are not seeking promotions alone; they are interested in flexibility and movement into careers that make the most of their knowledge and skills. Career lattices offer movement vertically, horizontally, and diagonally – essentially, team members have the opportunity to move beyond their department into a new position offering professional growth. And almost 90% of workers are willing to make this kind of career move without a financial incentive – according to Cornerstone OnDemand, a vast majority of American employees are “motivated by professional growth opportunities that promise purpose and fulfillment, but not necessarily a promotion or a bigger paycheck.”
For employers, this opens up new possibilities to identify jobs that are the best fit for team members, and reveal where the organization has specific skills needs or gaps. Savvy employers use career lattices as a tool to help keep their best employees happy at their company – giving them the leeway to develop new skills in-house versus having staffers search for new opportunities on the out side. Moving a star performer into a new department is a win-win – the employee feels valued and energized by the new opportunity, and the department benefits from the energy a high-performing team member brings to work.
Like career pathways, career lattices take on a lot of different forms – but rather than arrows going all one direction, lattice arrows can go up, side-to-side, and even downward to represent movement across positions and departments. Here’s an example:
A store manager wants to explore a career in buying.
- Both are mid-level positions requiring comparable skills, but one is customer-facing and the other is internal-facing.
- Your job as an employer is to determine what new or different skills your store manager needs to be successful in their new role, and then provide that support and training.
- Does the store manager need specific technical training, and if so, how is it available?
- Does the company have a mentor within the buying department who can support a successful transition?
What are some other career-lattice moves that might make sense in RTO? As you begin talking with your team about their dreams and hopes for their careers, listen closely – they’ll likely tell you where they see themselves going next. Being able to offer a few opportunities that may be a fit for them is key. Some employers even create internal job posting boards, so that internal candidates have ‘first dibs’ on new jobs as they become available. It won’t necessarily be a perfect fit at first, but when you consider the costs of hiring a brand-new employee for that position, it puts everything in perspective.
Charting courses for employees
Employers have an opportunity to map out career pathways and lattices for their team, making it easy for employees to understand the specific skills required to move up or over into other positions. Examine your company’s job descriptions and requirements to identify options for internal hiring and movement. You might want to review some of the hiring requirements around particular positions to ensure they’re truly necessary; as the labor market has tightened, many employers are realizing a college degree isn’t needed for every position and some jobs might not even need a high-school diploma. Remove barriers that keep employees from coming into your organization or moving into higher-skilled positions, and you enable your company to tap into new talents and abilities from within.
Organizations also play an important role in sharing real-life examples of career pathway success stories, so that internal and external candidates can see and be motivated by your commitment to professional growth. Sharing the story about the delivery-truck driver who moved up the ranks to become a district manager is a tremendous testimonial that might inspire other employees who begin to imagine themselves pursuing a similar pathway.
Career pathways serve as important tools that help prevent employee turnover, retain your best people, and lower your training costs. Now, how to begin?
Start now, step-by-step
Step 1: The first step in the career pathways process is to map the skills needed to advance within your organization. You should understand not only the entry-level jobs, but all positions available within your company, as well as the skills requirements and compensation associated with each.
Step 2: The second step is to develop education and training programs designed to support skills attainment based on the abilities associated with each job. The U.S. Department of Labor uses industry competency models to map skills, beginning with the basic “soft” skills every employee must have, such as integrity and motivation. Other required skills include academic and workplace competencies, like communication and teamwork. Industry-based technical competencies are skills defined by the industry itself, and the model tops out with core management skills essential across all management positions and sectors. The retail competency model is a great starting point for a list of key skills related to rent-to-own.
Step 3: The third step is to share ca reer pathways and lattices with your whole company, through education programs, training activities, and competencies associated with career growth. Help employees understand exactly what they need to succeed within your organization and provide specific training goals for them to achieve. This lets your team know you’re committed to their professional development, and that kind of commitment improves staff retention. Some learning programs also offer credentials for accomplished skills, and can result in employees gaining higher wages as they continue to grow their skillset.
Step 4: The fourth step is to provide support services to staff interested in exploring career moves within your organization. Whom can they come to with questions about their career pathway or how to move to a new position within the company? Their supervisor, human resources rep, or someone else? Do they need just a little special encouragement, or could they benefit from work with a career coach? Do you provide any kind of career assessment tool to help employees identify and understand their own strengths and weaknesses? These are just a few ideas for keeping the lines of communication open with your team, and helping them successfully engage in their own professional development.
Step 5: The fifth and final step is to publicly celebrate staff promotions and moves into new areas of your organization. New employees are watching and pondering their own futures with your company, so it’s important to show them your positive commitment to the growth and long-term success of all employees.
APRO is here to help
Successful career pathways and lattices for employees almost always include professional development and training opportunities. APRO is currently developing training resources where there may be a need to fulfill among our members.
Are you constantly training for account management, but not reaping any skills rewards as a result? Or maybe your staff is grappling with some new tracking software adopted to help ensure on-time deliveries? In either of these scenarios, can you clearly articulate what ‘good’ looks like?
APRO wants to know where you may be experiencing skills ‘gaps,’ so we can help provide the additional resources and training that would benefit our members. Whether using career pathways, traditional ladders, or innovative lattices, mapping the ways to continued success with your company will benefit individual employees and your organization overall.
Jen Troke is the APRO Director of Education & Membership.
Tell us your career mapping success stories!
APRO wants to hear all about your organization’s career mapping success stories, and how employees have successfully moved upward and onward via pathways and lattices. Who started off as a delivery driver and is now a district manager?
Please share your stories – they help inform our educational offerings, and may even be featured in an upcoming issue of APRO Today, our digital weekly newsletter!
Please send your success stories to edu@rtohq.org.
